Spiritual leader

“ So is the spirit born, and so do we see in the personnel of society what a wonderful triumvirate, working [p.263] for the real growth of human life with a power that nothing can resist, is made by the avowed sceptic, the loyalist, always secretly conventional and utilitarian, and the reformer, the great spiritual leader. ”

“ I have spent hours, and days, and nights, among the rocks and in the forest, praying to Almighty God to enlighten my mind, and lead me in the paths of rectitude and duty, and that he would let me live to behold a people he could own, who did receive the revelations of Jesus Christ, the Gospel, the principles and covenants which the ancients received and enjoyed. ”

“ I mean, Spiritual Power in Preaching. Who that knows the Lord, and contemplates the preacher's work, does not long for Spiritual Power? By that longing he means no ambitious wish to be remarkable, nor any unwholesome craving to be a leader in scenes of religious excitement. He means the deep desire to be an effectual messenger of his Master ”

“ The first to turn away from Us have been the world’s spiritual leaders in this age—they that call upon Us in the daytime and in the night season and mention My Name while resting on their lofty thrones. ”

“ They virtually say to their religious leaders, Stand there, and do not dare to interfere with our temporal affairs, or interfere with us in any way except in religious matters. They look upon them as their spiritual leaders only. ”

“ Amid this darkness, intellectual and moral, which surrounds man, and which for the moment pleases him because it relieves him of a strain, we need a guide. We must follow a leader who knows all the ways and enjoys the full light of heaven. ”

“ Long into the night the apostles and evangelists continued to ask questions, and from the many answers we would present the following thoughts, restated in modern phraseology:
Forceful ambition, intelligent judgment, and seasoned wisdom are the essentials of material success. Leadership is dependent on natural ability, discretion, will power, and determination. Spiritual destiny is dependent on faith, love, and devotion to truth—hunger and thirst for righteousness—the wholehearted desire to find God and to be like him. ”

“ And we, in our yearnings and our aspirations, in our longings and our strugglings and our miseries, may engender even in these later days a Christ whom the world will not crucify, a Hero Leader whose genius will humanise the grown strength of this supreme and sublime Thought. ”

“ I have had a vision of God, I have seen him as a great leader towering over the little lives of men, demanding the little lives of men, prepared to take them and guide them to the salvation of mankind and the conquest of pain and death. ”

“ For what can be the limit to the power of God to make those happy, glorious, and mighty whom He will? For what can be the bound to the fellow heirs with Christ, their Leader in trial, their Leader in triumph? Omnipotence for their protector, for their friend, for their father! ”

“ I longed to be a leader of men. I admired the great moral teachers of the past. I felt rather than understood religion—God, a world of woe, man working for his salvation through helping others to work out theirs. ”

“ In every word, work, wish, fear—pilot, comrade, helper, savior; glory of gods and men, leader best and brightest: in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honor that sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men. ”

“ It is, therefore, in mercy and in tender love that God has given Him to be a Leader, and our part is to accept the gift and trust Him. When we are brought into perplexity, into one of those positions of life where two ways seem to meet, we may fall down before Him as our great Leader, and say, “For thy name’s sake, lead me and guide me.” ”

“ Not as Creator, Preserver and Governor of the material universe, but as our spiritual Illuminator, Regenerator and Saviour. True, the devout mind sees God in the external world. The visible universe proclaims his wisdom, his majesty and his power. ”

“ He likewise governs the common animal of the soul, directs its peculiar life, and imparts to us the principles of all our thoughts and reasonings. We also perform such things as he suggests to our intellect, and he continues to govern us till, through sacerdotal theurgy, we obtain a God for the inspective guardian and leader of the soul. ”

“ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Leader:
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by his blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. ”

“ I feel, however, more and more, the inadequacy and comparative insignificance of all human accomplishments, whether in a minister or a missionary, and the unspeakable, overwhelming importance of spiritual graces—humility, patience, meekness, love—the habitual enjoyment of closet religion, a soul abstracted from this world, and much occupied in the contemplation of heavenly glories. ”

“ Then we hear much today of the need for leaders. The need could not be exaggerated, but does not this lack exist, in part, because we have forgot that the Christian's first duty is to be a follower, and that only from amongst real followers can God (not man, least of all the man himself) raise up a leader? These are small matters, you may say, but "straws show which way the wind blows," and the spirit, like the wind, manifests itself first in small matters. ”

“ The only protection and rescue from worldliness lie in our intense and radical spirituality; and our only hope for the existence and maintenance of this high, saving spirituality, under God, is in the purest and most aggressive leadership—a leadership that knows the secret power of prayer, the sign by which the Church has conquered, and that has conscience, conviction, and courage to hold her true to her symbols, true to her traditions, and true to the hidings of her power. ”

“ Those who have come to feel that the seat of authority in religion lies in the first-hand experience of the soul will turn eagerly to it, opening up as it does so many channels of the spiritual life in the past.”—North American Review. ”

“ The religious leader crystallizes around himself and his way of life a sentiment that is already in existence when he calls unto the faithful. Very few of the masses who respond come under his personal influence. ”

“ Verily, I beseech, with all earnestness, the Omnipotence of Might and Glory to brighten thy face by the light gleaming from the lamp of the Alliance and to quicken thy mind by the spirit which out-pours from the Kingdom of God and to make thee a sign of His signs which are shining in the horizons. He grants that which He wisheth and to whomsoever He wisheth. Verily, He is powerful and mighty!
“O servant of God!...” O servant of God!
Faith is the magnet which draws the confirmation of the Merciful One. Service is the magnet which attracts the heavenly strength. I hope thou wilt attain both. ”

“ We shall appeal to and invigorate the conscience in proportion as we rely upon the Holy Spirit as the one source of spiritual power.... 'The fellowship of the Holy Ghost' and His grace through the Church is the master word of the twentieth century. ”

“ How great is the need at this moment when the promised outpourings of His grace are ready to be extended to every soul, for us all to form a broad vision of the mission of the Cause to mankind, and to do all in our power to spread it throughout the world! The eyes of the world, now that the sublime Personality of the Master has been removed from this visible plane, are turned with eager anticipation to us who are named after His name, and on whom rests primarily the responsibility to keep burning the torch that He has lit in this world. ”

“ And if the whole people will cleave to Him, and be humble, faithful, and united in keeping His commandments, the Spirit and power of God will rest upon them, and their blessings will be a thousand fold greater than they are to-day.
Our strength is in God, and not in our ourselves. Our wisdom and power come from Him; they are not of ourselves. ”

“ Each man's life is proved by some Sword of Assay. The test of a man's call to the ministry is his power to seize the Sword of the Spirit: wield the spiritual forces of the world, insight, conviction, persuasion, truth. To do this successfully at least five things appear to be necessary: a sterling education, marked ability in writing and in public speaking, a noble manner, a voice capable of majestic modulations, and a deep and tender heart. ”

“ Call him God or man, still we are ranged under his leadership, and if we strive to be faithful followers, or, deeper still, true members of his mystical body, our work must grow up with his inspiration. ”

“ They wish their leaders to be far more holy, to be filled with more light, more intelligence, more faith, more compassion, more charity, more love, more humility than they themselves are. They wish their leaders to be filled with the patience of Job and the integrity of the angels, while they themselves neglect to attain to all this fulness. They do not sufficiently control themselves; they give way too much to passion and the idle follies of life.
I seek as dilligently as you do that the leaders of this people may be and do precisely as God wishes them to. ”

“ Or religious still even more than they—for those were mental, these spiritual—you beheld there men, whose heads before their time were becoming grey, meditating on their own souls, and in holy hope and humble trust in their Redeemer, if not yet prepared, perpetually preparing themselves for the world to come! ”

“ He who would follow a great leader must needs endeavour himself, Ohne Hast ohne Rast, and the divine lead which we call Nature is infinitely blessed in the following, but steep to tread and hard to find and by no means to be confounded with leisurely strolling in ways of our own devising. ”

“ A prophet and a father, a priest and a counsellor, a brother, friend, and judge, a sacrifice and an inspiration should he be who, in reverence and love, brings before a waiting congregation the very Word of Life!
SECOND: OF SPIRITUAL RULE 1. The primary rule is over conscience. The man who sways a conscience sways a human life. The man who sways a nation's conscience controls that nation's life. ”

“ Then comes in superstition to the aid of progress. A successful leader is first feared as a man, then reverenced as a supernatural being, and finally himself, or his descendant, in the flesh or in tradition, is worshiped as a god. ”

“ Who has ordained the passions of the mind and the body, which constitute the soul? Who should control them? To whom should they be devoted? If the vail of the covering that is over us and the nations of the earth were so removed that we could behold the glory, the excellency, the beauty of the attributes that are dispensed by the children of men—for they are appointed by the Lord who has ordained all these things—would not God be in all our thoughts? ”

“ So he has called you from the seven centres of the world, and he has breathed the breath of wisdom and of power into your souls, and now he sends you forth as bearers of the light of life, apostles of the human race. ”

“ Thou art their Lord, the Lord of the heavens and the earth, the Lord of all the worlds. Strengthen this Faith, O Lord, through the power of these servants, and cause them to prevail over all the peoples of the world; for they, of a truth, are Thy servants who have detached themselves from aught else but Thee, and Thou, verily, art the protector of true believers. ”

“ In fact, the selection once made, you should look upon your spiritual guide more as a guardian angel than as a mere man. You place your confidence not in him but in God, for it is God who will lead and instruct you through his instrumentality by inspiring him with the sentiments and words necessary for your guidance. ”

“ By the might of my Lord, verily, the Lord will assist only those who will remain firm in His Cause, and desire union, love, humility and submissiveness, and to become separated from aught else save God. Every forehead which is illuminated with these lights will be a lamp of guidance and a star whereby all horizons will be lighted.
Exert thyself with all thy heart and soul and with all strength, so that thou mayest become a sign of firmness and as a banner of the Word of God which may wave on every lofty edifice through the favor of thy Glorious Lord. ”

“ The more we canvass and sift and weigh and balance the materials, the more clearly and grandly does his figure rise before us, as the true Head of humanity, the perfect Ideal, not only of wisdom and tenderness and love, but of courage also, because He was and is the simple Truth of God—the expression, at last, in flesh and blood of what He who created us means each one of our race to be. ”

“ We have tried to teach ourselves to lead and guide ourselves, to be dictated and controlled by the direction of the Holy Spirit, and then to teach and counsel the people under the dictates of that Spirit. ”

“ Their creed includes even some lofty and pure conceptions. Under the title of the Great Spirit, the Master of Life, the Maker of heaven and earth, they distinctly recognise a supreme ruler of the universe and an arbiter of their destiny. ”

“ His large mental powers, his force and energy of purpose, his self-forgetfulness and power of endurance, his consuming zeal and devotion of his whole faculties to his work, his tender sympathy and ardent love of souls, together with his admirable judgment and prudence, made him a born ruler of men. ”